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Friday,
June 22, 2001, Chandigarh, India  
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SBI net
profit falls 21.8 pc
‘Enron
debacle to hit FDI into India’ |
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Can
Bollywood go global? Oil that
helps people lose weight 4.5 lakh
IT jobs in USA
Coloured
apple trays in demand Moody’s:
India not on review list HSIDC to
allot 3023 plots Verka
milk price raised
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SBI net profit falls 21.8 pc Mumbai, June 21 The bank posted a net profit of Rs16.04 billion ($341.5 million), down from Rs 20.52 billion the previous year. Income from operations rose 16.4 per cent to Rs 300.21 billion from 257.70 billion. Some analysts had expected net profit to drop even more sharply — to as low as Rs 8 billion if the bank elected to write off the bulk of the cost of the voluntary retirement scheme implemented in January 2001. By contrast, other analysts had expected SBI to post an Rs18 billion net profit, figuring the bank would choose to write off the nearly Rs 24 billion cost of the employee reduction scheme over five years. About 10 per cent of the bank's 233,000 employees accepted the offer.
New loan scheme
by next week The SBI is introducing a new scheme for a soft loan up to Rs 15 lakh for higher education in India and abroad. The State Bank of India (SBI) is assuming a leadership role by being the first to introduce the scheme next week, which will permit students to access loans of Rs 4 lakh without collateral security and up to Rs 15 lakh with collateral. To make things easier, no margin money is to be insisted upon. The exiting SBI educational loan scheme which enabled students to get loans up to Rs 10 lakh at higher rate of interest is being scrapped. Under the new SBI scheme, the rate of interest to be charged for loans up to Rs 4 lakh is State Bank Medium Term Lending Rate (SBMTLR), which is 12 per cent. For loans higher than this, the interest will be 1 per cent plus SBMTLR. Loans are to be given on a floating rate basis. To put it simply, a student can avail loans above Rs 4 lakh and upto Rs 15 lakh at 13 per cent interest. Besides, half per cent concession in interest is to be given during the moratorium period if 0.5 per cent of loan amount is paid every month towards part payment of interest. One per cent concession in interest during the moratorium period is to be given if full interest is paid during this period.
BILT Board reconstituted Mr V.M. Thapar today resigned from the Board of Ballarpur Industries (BILT), following which the Board of Directors of the company has been reconstituted. While V. M. Thapar, Joint Managing Director, resigned from the directorship of the company, B. Hariharan, Chief Financial Officer was inducted as a whole-time director, a company statement said here. M.J. Subbaiah will now represent ICICI on the reconstituted board in place of Sandeep
Bakshi.
Escorts net profit fall Escorts Ltd today announced a marginal decline in their profits during the last fiscal but launched expansion plans mainly in the healthcare sector. The company declared a profit after tax of Rs 107.39 crore compared to Rs 112.35 crore in the previous year. However, its turnover and other income showed slight improvement at Rs 1578.84 crore compared to Rs 1570.01 crore in the previous year. The Board of Directors also announced a dividend of 45 per cent for the year. Company Chairman Rajan Nanda said the tractor industry sales were down this year by 10 per cent despite bumper crops. The company sold 45,000 tractors during the fiscal with 19.4 per cent market share.
Tata Tea to invest
in Tetley Tata Tea, India’s largest tea producer, will invest $ 41.9 million in its subsidiary Tetley Ltd to help it repay its high-cost debt within the next 3-4 years, a senior company official was quoted as saying today. The proposed investment will increase the equity capital of Tetley and reduce Tata Tea’s stake in Tetley from 100-80 per cent.
Agencies
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‘Enron debacle to hit FDI into India’
Washington, June 21 “While it is not my intention to make specific suggestions for resolving this dispute, I do want to underscore that it will be hard for foreign investors to look seriously at India until this dispute is resolved in a satisfactory way. “I encourage the Central Government and the Indian business community to do everything they can to bring about a prompt resolution,” US Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs, Alan Larson said at the US-India Business Council meet yesterday. “Speaking frankly, the investment dispute between the Dabhol Power Company and the Maharashtra State Electricity Board is now casting a cloud over India’s investment climate,” he said. Summarising two days of intensive discussions and debates, the council said: “The dispute over the Dabhol Power Project erodes the credibility of the Indian Government, may soften India’s credit rating, and deters all other kinds of investment.” “This issue needs to be resolved, and it needs to be resolved quickly,” Frank Wisner, Chairman of the council and a former Ambassador to India, said. In the review of overall economic conditions, the 400 business and government leaders attending the council’s annual meeting, also expressed serious concern about several aspects of India’s business climate. The inadequacy of infrastructure and the fiscal deficit was singled out by many companies as the critical impediment to investment in India.
PTI
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Can Bollywood go global?
Washington, June 21 The delegation, headed by Sushma Swaraj, has so far visited major studios in Los Angeles and Motion Pictures Association of USA President Jack Valenti in Washington with the message that India wants to be an international player in entertainment. In that effort, New Delhi will be hoping to replicate the same phenomenal success it has enjoyed in global information technology, Indian business and government leaders said. "In the trinity of ICE, that is, infotech communication and entertainment, the last two, three years, especially in India, have seen considerable focus on IT and communication," Swaraj said at the two-day U.S.-India Business Council conference in the U.S. capital ending on Wednesday. "However the entertainment sector has an equally vast potential," she said. India, and the Mumbai movie industry popularly known as Bollywood, produces some 800 films per year compared with the US' 100, making it the largest film-producing country in the world in numbers of films. But its market share is $3.5 billion in a global $300 billion industry and there are just 12 theaters per million people compared with 116 screens per million Americans, industry executives said, indicating room for growth both in global market share and in theater construction. Big roadblocks Nishith Desai, founder of a legal and tax consulting firm that provided the conference with an interim report from a study on "Bollywood vs Hollywood," summed it up by saying what Hollywood has that Bollywood does not — respect for legal agreements, standardisation and funding mechanisms. "The lack of written contracts is probably one of the foremost reasons why Hollywood and Bollywood remain separated," said the interim report, the final version of which is due out by September. Most agreements are made verbally and even when written are short and often ambiguous, it said. Arthur Andersen has said the Indian entertainment industry is poised for high growth if only its ride could be made smoother by a government that has long ignored it and even stunted the sector's growth by state control of the broadcast media. India now allows 100 per cent foreign investment in films and television software and has formed a 45-member, multi-party standing committee to look at the politically-sensitive issue of allowing such investment in the print media, Swaraj said.
Reuters
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Oil that helps people lose weight
Rotterdam, June 21 Will they believe they can throw out bland non-fat products and bulk up on fried foods and rich salad dressings? That's the dilemma of a joint venture planning to market a new vegetable oil, already on sale in Japan, that helps people shed pounds. The cooking oil contains diacylglycerol (DAG) which scientific studies have shown to cause a 50 per cent increase in weight loss, a conference in the Netherlands heard on Wednesday. Gary Miller of agri-business giant Archer Daniels Midland said last week it had formed a joint venture with Japanese company Kao Corp, which developed the product and launched it in Japan in 1999. The oil, marketed as Healthy Econa Oil, has become a hit in Japan, becoming the best selling cooking oil in financial terms, with $100 million in sales last year.
Reuters
Health hazards of
euro coins
Doctors issued a novel warning: euros may damage your health. They warned that some of the millions of incoming euro coins might cause severe skin irritation, according to the mass-circulation Kronen Zeitung. The one and two euro coins were believed to have a nickel content 500 times higher than allowed, said dermatologists. This could cause rashes and other skin allergies. The composition of the coins, 75 per cent copper and 25 per cent nickel, was “poison” for allergy sufferers. “The consequence could be eczema on the hands, and in the worst case, a rash on the body’’, said dermatologist Helmut Lindemayr. About 800,000 Austrians already suffered from over-sensitivity to metallic skin irritants, among other things jewellery, glasses frames, watch straps or buttons. The paper said experts were still disputing the potential hazard of the coins which the population would be using from next January 1.
DPA
Los Angeles airport
most dangerous
Los Angeles: The Los Angeles international airport is the most dangerous in the United States in terms of near collisions on its runways, The Los Angeles Times has reported, citing a federal study. The paper said on Wednesday that the airport, one of the largest in the USA, had 13 near collisions between 1997 and 2000. Examining more than 1,300 near misses at 450 airports, the report also showed that 17 per cent of the most serious incidents occurred at the six busiest airports measured by the proportion of takeoffs and landings: Dallas-Ft. Worth, Chicago O’ Hare, Atlanta, Phoenix, Detroit and Los Angeles.
DPA
It's battle over
AIDS drugs
Geneva: Developing countries, many battling with the AIDS epidemic, stepped up their fight on Wednesday for access to cheap medicines, saying this should take priority over the rights of drugs firms in world trade accords. A group of 50 poorer states laid out their position at a special meeting of the 141 members of the WTO, called to clarify existing international trade rules and how they should apply to essential drugs.
Reuters
Music giants
join hands
New Delhi: Several music recording giants have joined hands with an online digital music distributor to sell their music to owners of personal computers, thus seeking to popularise the concept of single track sales. Lovers of good music will be able to pick the album or even single tracks of their choice from the library of TIPS, BMG Crescendo, EMI (through Virgin Records), Lahari Music, Times Music, and Archies and download it to their own computers — for a payment of Rs 45 to Rs 50 per song.
UNI
Delhi to set up
cyber city
New Delhi: The Delhi Government is fast moving towards e-governance, by setting up a cyber city, an IT park and by introducing IT education in schools and JJ clusters as well. A piece of 100 acres has already been earmarked for setting up of an IT park near the international airport and the cyber city will soon be set up.
UNI
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4.5 lakh IT jobs in USA New York, June 21 A recent report by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) says U.S. companies hope to add 900,000 IT workers to their rolls this year. Of this figure, 450,000 vacancies will go unfilled because of lack of applicants with requisite technical and non-technical skills in 2001. The USA has a national IT workforce of 10.4 million. The ITAA has warned people not to rely on perceptions and anecdotes and darkened screens of many dotcom businesses and employees to confirm their suspicions about a bad job market. "Despite the experience of individual companies, the U.S. requirement for a steady supply of new IT workers continues," says the ITAA report, though it concedes that the demand has diminished. Last year, the ITAA conducted a similar study titled, "Bridging the Gap," which projected a 12-month demand for IT workers of 1.6 million and a shortfall in filling jobs of approximately 850,000. This study explains how the employment picture has changed. "This trend suggests that job candidates should likewise sharpen their professional focus in building skills and seeking work." Sponsored by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), American Management Systems (AMS), Cisco Systems, Hall Kinion, Intel, ITT Educational Services, Knowledge Workers, Microsoft, and SRA International, the study results are based on 685 telephone interviews with hiring managers of IT firms that create and sell commercial IT solutions to customers, and non-IT firms that use IT solutions to assist in business operations but are not developing such solutions for commercial sales. Respondents were selected at random and the sample can be projected to represent all U.S. for-profit companies with more than 50 employees. This study is composed of interviews with 191 IT companies and 494 non-IT companies, representing one out every 70 IT companies and one out of every 600 non-IT companies of this size in the entire country. Results have a sampling variability of 3.1 per cent at the 90 per cent confidence level. Today more than 10.4 million people in the USA are IT workers. This number does not include jobs in government, non-profit organisations or small entrepreneurial firms. This number is 4 per cent higher than the 10 million total measured in last year's report. While the demand for IT workers is down 44 per cent from 2000, a fact no doubt attributable to the slowdown in the high-tech sector and the economy in general, "The drop in demand does not reflect a fall off in IT employment, which will increase year to year." But the "talent gap" for IT workers remains large, although substantially less than in 2000. Hiring managers report an anticipated shortfall of 425,000 IT workers to fill their openings. Last year, ITAA found a shortage of approximately 850,000 workers, or twice the current total. Non-IT companies remain the larger employer of IT workers with 9.5 million, generate the greater demand at more than 640,000 and experience the larger gap at approximately 303,000. In aggregate terms, non-IT companies employ 10 times more IT workers than do IT companies. Not surprising as this study finds a total of 305,835 non-IT companies in the USA with over 50 employees, compared to 13,842 IT companies with over 50 employees. This means 22 non-IT companies exist for every one IT company in the USA.
IANS
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Coloured
apple trays in
demand Chandigarh, June 21 He was here in the city on the occasion of celebration of the eleventh anniversary of the company. More than 200 farmers from Himachal were also here to see the latest packaging techniques of the company. Mr Tapishwar said the introduction of coloured packaging apple trays would help procure an additional price to the farmers. The trays produced by the company are sturdy, water resistant and in different shapes, said he. The USA, Australia, New Zealand have marked their entry into the Indian apple market and it is time for the fruit growers to improve the marketing and presentation of their apples to gain an edge over others especially China which produces 200 lakh tonnes of apples as against 15 lakh tonnes in India, said Mr Rakesh Ahuja, MD, Broadway Agro Agencies who is one of the top apple growers of Himachal Pradesh Mr Rakesh Ahuja said they are getting more than Rs 100 per cartel in excess due to this packaging. Mr Chet Ram Bedi for Kechin Ghati and Ram Dyal of Jaron (Narkanda) said, this year the apple growth is about 35 per cent. The main cause of the scarce production is weather calamity. First drought, the rain and in the last
‘kohra’.
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Moody’s: India not on review list Mumbai, June 21 “The rationale for the relatively low rating relates to the continuing inability of the government to rein in Public spending, particularly on subsidies and defence,” Ms Kristin Lindow, Moody’s India analyst, told Reuters via e-mail. There has been market speculation that India’s ratings may be reviewed for a possible upgrade. Moody’s has a BA2 rating on India with a positive outlook. “The rating is not on review for upgrade, and is not likely to be on review in the near future,” the Moody’s analyst said in response to questions. Ms Lindow said lower world trade growth this year — projected by the IMF to be less than half the increase of the past year — would affect exports. An industrial slowdown, failure to push privatisation aggressively, feeble foreign direct investments and high real interest rates were also negative factors. “The chances that monetary and fiscal policy will be able to turn this around quickly are therefore rather slim,” she added. India’s GDP growth is expected to be under 6 per cent in the current year ending March, 2002. The economy is estimated to have grown by 6 per cent in 2000-01. GDP growth was 6.4 per cent and 6.6 per cent in the two preceding years, a far cry from an annual average of 7.5 per cent for three straight years in the mid-1990s. Latest industrial figures indicate that sluggish conditions could persist. Production growth slid in April to 2.7 per cent from 6.5 per cent a year earlier. Besides, a large government financing requirement, the RBI’s desire to maintain a stable or slowly depreciating rupee has kept real interest rates high, the Moody’s official said. Supporting India’s rating are its moderate and manageable external debt service needs, low short-term external debt, and healthy foreign exchange reserves (at $ 43 billion), Ms Lindow said. Another positive was the restructuring by the private domestic industry in response to increasing international trade and competition.
Reuters
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HSIDC to allot 3023 plots Chandigarh, June 21 Allotment of these plots, involving 808 acres, were also likely to generate employment opportunities for about 1.4 lakh persons and substantial revenue to the state government, the spokesman said. The HSIDC recently allotted 81 plots in various industrial parks developed by it for projects which would catalyse an investment of around Rs 92
crore. The allotment were made in IMT Manesar, Rai and Barhi Industrial Estates in a day at the HSIDC head office at Panchkula, near here, by a high-level committee of officers constituted by the state government. After the announcement of the new industrial policy, the industrial plots and sheds in various industrial estates were being allotted on the on-going basis. The HSIDC’s prestigious industrial estate at IMT
Manesar, near Gurgaon was attracting a large number of MNCs. UNI |
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Verka milk price raised Chandigarh, June 21 It is after nearly 3 years that Milkfed has increased its prices. Milkfed has also increased the price paid to the milk producers from Rs 160 per kg fat to Rs 165 per kg fat. The additional revenues thus raised will go to the milk producers and will also be used to meet packaging costs, electricity and labour cost inputs. Ludhiana, Patiala and Mohali are catering to more than 3 lakh litres of the total 4.5 lakh litres demand in the region, said Mr S K Sharma, GM, Mohali plant. The revised rates in Chandigarh, Panchkula, Mohali, Ludhiana and Patiala is now be Rs 18 per litre for full cream milk, Rs 16 per litre for standardised milk, Rs 14 a litre for toned milk, Rs 12 a litre for double toned milk and for skimmed milk, the price a litre will be Rs 11. In Shimla, the revised rate for standardised milk will be Rs 17 per litre and that for double toned milk, Rs 13 per litre.
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